Gangbuster
by Fuzzyken
Summary: AU-ish- Toph Beifong was Chief of RCPD for forty-seven years before resigning. Not all those years were good, and some were horrible for her. But in the end, she regrets nothing she did all her years on the force.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

My name's Toph Beifong, and I was the chief of police of Republic City for forty-seven years. Not all those years were great, though.

You'd think that since the hundred year war ended, everyone would've at least tried to give peace a chance, even in Republic City. You'd hope that people would remember what so many people had died for and fought for and try to honor that. That's what I thought when I became Chief of Metalbending Police for the city. I thought the job would be a cakewalk, at least in my lifetime when the war was still fresh in everyone's minds. No one would think to mess with me, a war hero, I thought.

Even today, I still feel pretty stupid for being as naive as I was, but I've still got no regrets at all for doing what I did in all my years on the force.

The thing was that Republic City, after a while, was not like any other city.

You see, there's always been somewhat of a class system in the kind of cities I grew up with, but in Republic City it's taken to a whole new level. There's such a giant gap between the poor, middle, and rich classes that most people that are born in each one stay there forever. But the thing about Republic City's system was that with hard work and a lot of balls and brains, you could move up. At the time, this was revolutionary. Moving up class systems was unheard of in most big cities. But the thing is, as more people got richer, more people wanted to steal from them and in some cases, murder them. They just couldn't work for their money so they had to go and rob other people's shit. Some people were twisted enough to where they raped and killed and stole just for the fun of it.

And when they got caught, there was no real guarantee that they would get locked up. There had to be a legal trial and everything. It wasn't like the old days where if you caught a murderer you could have him killed, or if you caught a thief and you could cut off his hands, or if you caught a rapist you could just cut his balls off and send him on his way; that would be considered cruel and unusual punishment to the system, even if the person deserved it. The only thing they really left alone was the death penalty and there had to be a long process for even that. The way it worked was that you needed to find sufficient witness testimony and evidence to convict someone of a crime. If the evidence checked out, they went to jail or got killed or whatever it was the judge wanted. Simple, right?

No, not really.

As you probably guessed, along with anything else legal, there was plenty of room for manipulation and rule bending of the legal system, especially back in the days when the system wasn't even thirty years old. As the criminals got smarter, they realized they could have the judges bribed or even have criminals working on the inside. One criminal perfected it, though. He was a real ruthless bastard. He was smart, too. He knew the system inside and out. He knew its flaws and everything.

But what really set him apart from the rest of the shit that populated the streets was that he was a bloodbender.

Even though bloodbending's been illegal for the last sixty years, he was never convicted for it. For one, like I said, he knew the legal system inside and out. Two, he had the money to get the best attorneys you could buy. And three, nobody wanted to prosecute him because they were scared shitless of him. I mean, this guy can control the blood flow in your body and along with that everything else in your body. He was so good at it that he didn't even have to lift a finger to bloodbend an entire fucking room of people. That's why no court and no judge wanted to have to deal with him. They knew what he could do.

One day he was standing trial for bloodbending a guy to death. I may have been blind, but when I got to the crime scene, all it took was my seismic sense to tell that he had used his bending to wrap the poor bastard's body up like a pretzel and then essentially have the blood boil inside to where it literally exploded. It was a bloody mess. There were parts of him all over the place. We'd find his eyeballs and brains stuck to the ceiling, his arms and legs all scattered throughout the room, you get the picture.

And to top it all off, he was still breathing when we got there.

it took forever to get rid of the new paint job he caused. There was one witness. And when he stood up there to testify, he didn't say a word. He was trembling and I knew he wanted to say something, but he didn't. The judge was in on it, too. He had been bribed by one of his cronies to not convict him. The guy went free that day just like he did all the other times. Do you want to know why he always went free?

It was because of fear. They knew what this guy could do. They knew they couldn't just put him behind bars because he would just bloodbend the guards to let him go and then kill the guards. And I couldn't whack him because I'd get killed for it either by bloodbending or formal execution for murder. He had all the judges and all the prosecutors and attorneys in his pockets. He was untouchable. As the years went by, we discovered that he was the leader of a gang called the Red Monsoons. It's a triad gang of waterbending mobsters that mainly extorted money from people and stole. They were like any other gang in that aspect. But what set them apart was their leader and the sheer amount of money they had.

That's all it took was money to _really_ make him untouchable. The guy was a pure psychopath and there was nothing we could do about it. If it was twenty years earlier, I could've just killed the guy myself and gotten it over with; he wouldn't have been the first one. But I couldn't do it anymore.

But with the legal system, there's a loophole to everything, and I mean _everything_. Even for dealing with the bloodbending motherfucker named Yakone.


	2. Chapter 1

Yakone was a real piece of work to figure out in the first place. The guy almost never covered his tracks. Remember when I told you earlier about how he bloodbent that guy to death? Yeah, did I also tell you that it was no accident that he just left him there to die like that for people to find?

"Chief Beifong! Look! On the wall!" one of my officers stammered.

I rolled my useless eyes at his exclamation. "How many times do I need to tell you people? _I'm fucking blind._ Just tell me, what is it?"

It took a few seconds for the guy to find his words, but then again I don't blame him considering the circumstances we were in. "Uh... there's a message written on the wall... in blood."

"Well? What does it say?"

"It reads 'death to all firebenders."

I got more pissed off at that than anything else. I mean, it was thirty years since the war had ended, and firebenders and waterbenders _still_ wanted to kill each other. How fucked up is that?

Then my seismic sense picked up something coming from the corpse on the other side of the room that almost gave me a heart attack.

"Oh, shit... The guy is still breathing!" I could not believe what was happening. Chunks of his brain were scattered across the ceiling along with his eyes, but apparently not the chunks that kept his heart beating and his lungs working. I felt like I was going to throw up right then and there.

"What are we supposed to do, Chief?"

It took me less than two seconds to narrow it down to two options. One: We mercy kill the poor son of a bitch and put him out of his misery. Or two: We try to get him to a hospital and save him so that he can maybe provide some information on what exactly the hell Yakone was even doing there. He may have been a criminal but I knew he wasn't a serial killer, otherwise I would've been out of a job.

Of course I couldn't just kill him. We had the guy rushed to the hospital and as you can probably guess, he died. From what I heard, it took a while for him to finally croak for good. I remember feeling so angry at Yakone for doing what he did, that I almost went after him to kill him myself, career be damned.

Until I found out that the guy was a rival gang leader. It turns out that he was Xu Fin, the leader of a rival Triad gang of firebenders called the Agni Kais.

I didn't care that Xu Fin got killed; he was another extortionist and he deserved it. But what scared me and everyone else on the city council was that this could mean the start of an all out turf war between the Red Monsoons and the Agni Kais. I would've been fine with letting them kill each other if it weren't for all the innocent lives that would be caught in the crossfire, not to mention all the destruction they would cause.

"Chief Beifong, it had come to our attention that a gang war may be brewing in our city. Is something wrong over at headquarters? I would've expected better from the world's greatest earthbender." Councilman Takada said to me at the council meeting.

" _Fuck you, you fucking piece of shit. You know what I've had to pull just to keep Republic City from dying?"_ I mentally facepalmed myself for not seeing this comimg. Of course they were going to call me in here; I'm going to be honest, I never liked going to these meetings. I was bored to death for most of them and they just rehashed the same shit over and over again, and it kept me from getting things done on the street and at the station. The council itself wasn't too horrible except for Takada. It seemed he always out to get me. I was just thankful that he wasn't the head of the council. That job belonged to Sokka.

Sokka was the one person I could always count on in the whole council, as slippery as he could be. He was a politician, after all, and I don't hold that against him. He did what he needed to do and didn't compromise his morals. It was like finding a corn snake in a nest full of vipers.

The thing is the council should've had the city's best interests in mind, but a lot of them were in it for themselves. That's the whole problem with politics, period. There's always got to be a whole bunch of this "What's in it for me?" kind of bullshit instead of being public servants. What set Sokka apart from them was that his heart was always in the right place, even though his brain wasn't for some of the time. "Meathead" was what I would always call him when we were kids. And I still do.

Sokka stood up to adress the room in that fake formal tone he always uses at these meetings. "Now, just because a little gang war _might_ be brewing, doesn't give us reason to doubt Toph—I mean, Chief Beifong." Then he turned to me. "Right?"

" _Leave it to Meathead to put me on the spot."_ Subtlety and eloquence were never really his strong suits. I cleared my throat and stood up to address the room in my own fake tone. "Gentlemen, you have my word that I'll do everything in my power to end this turf war before it begins. I promise."

"Well, chief, let's hope you do." said Takada. "It would be a shame if you failed and all those innocent lives got caught in the crossfire, would it not?"

I wanted to earthbend that fuck into the ground. I didn't need him to tell me that; I knew what was at stake. "Yeah, it would be a shame. Good thing it's not going to happen."

"That is not what your performance is suggesting. Tell me, how long has it been that you've been hunting Yakone?"

 _Oh, shit. I knew this was coming, and now I have to face the music._ "Three years." I sighed.

"And have you made any progress in catching him?"

I had to think on my feet at that moment. I hate doing that. "Actually, yes we have. We found the body of the leader of the Agni Kais. Witnesses saw Yakone fleeing from the scene of the crime, and I'm going to bring them in for questioning tomorrow."

He seemed to consider what I said for a moment, and then said, "Even though was the Agni Kai Triad's leader, that still doesn't distract from your poor performance in catching Yakone."

"My poor performance? You do realize that I've caught him before, right?"

"And he broke out of jail all those times. How do you explain that, _Chief Beifong?_ "

I could feel my blood boiling on the inside, but on the outside I did my best to maintain a composed appearance. Or at least as composed as you can be when you have a complete asshole who you can't hurl boulders at, ask you questions that make no sense.

"How do I explain it? Why would I? It's only my job to put him in jail, not to keep him there!"

"Then how are you going to prevent this turf war from happening? Why are you letting it brew in the first place?"

 _Just keep talking, you arrogant fuck._ Thinking about Takada still makes me want to smash things. "I can't be everywhere at once. How am I supposed to prevent things if I don't know about them first?"

"I don't know, that isn't my problem."

 _I'm going to murder you, you fucking piece of shit. I'd just love to take your scrawny little body and crush it in an avalanche of—_

"Then why are you asking me these questions if you clearly don't want to hear a solution?" I replied, barely keeping myself from acting on my thoughts. Believe it or not, he seemed taken aback by what I'd asked him.

"What are you talking about? Of course I want a solution! Otherwise I wouldn't be asking you these questions."

"You just said it 'wasn't your problem'."

"I meant that your job of finding the solution isn't my problem. But this gang business is _all_ our problem."

"Alright, alright. That's enough of this. You guys can't sit through one meeting without arguing? _One meeting?"_ Sokka finally said. About time he decided to intervene. Then he addressed Takada. "And you should know your place, Takada. The only reason I keep you here is because I can't find anyone better to take care of the city's budget."

I could feel that prick deflate from where I was sitting. I went from wanting to kill him to wanting him alive so he could be embarrassed. It took everything I had to not burst out laughing.

"Now, why don't we take just one second, and hear out Chief Beifong's solution to this little problem. Is that okay with everyone? Guess what, it doesn't matter since I'm head of the council and you guys aren't." Sokka was really making it hard to not laugh. "Now, the floor is yours, chief. Is there anything you want to say before we end this meeting?"

I knew immediately what that meant. It meant he wanted me to have the last word and to end the meeting quickly before the other council members could get their two cents in. I cleared my throat and stood up to address the council. "I promise to do whatever it takes to catch Yakone and end this turf war before it even begins. We don't even know for sure if it's going to happen yet, and Yakone can't stay hidden forever. We'll see what we can get out of these witnesses tomorrow. Eventually, we'll find him."

Sokka yawned and said, "Alright, this meeting is over." then he banged his gavel.

"How the fuck are you able to work with people like that?" I asked Sokka as we were walking out of the courthouse.

"You give someone enough time, they'll get used to _anything._ But if I wasn't head of the council, I'd probably just quit, maybe fake my death or something and then move back to the South Pole." He told me. I didn't doubt him for a second.

"I wouldn't be able to deal with that all day, every day."

"You know I've always got your back, right? You just leave all this politics shit to me. As long as you do your policing and gangbusting and all that, you'll be A-ok."

"Gee, thanks." I deadpanned. "Policing and gangbusting? That's new, Meathead."

"What can I say? I'm a man of fresh ideas. But listen, I want to talk to you about Takada."

"Takada, that prick. I want to earthbend him into the ground and leave him—"

" _Keep your voice down, Toph!"_ Sokka whispered furiously. I admit, I felt kind of embarrased. The whole point of Sokka ending that meeting was to keep me from saying that kind of shit in public, and what was I doing?

I could feel the stares of some of the people still just outside the courthouse. "Alright, alright. Fine." I said.

"Toph, that kind of shit talk is going to cost me my job one day. Just because I'm head of the council, doesn't mean I can't get voted out. So can you please not talk about killing any of the council members while you're still around the courthouse?"

"Alright. Would you just calm down?" Then I added in a whisper. "I still want to earthbend that fuck into the ground."

"I don't blame you. Now listen, you got to watch out for him. He may not be head of the council, but he can sure as hell ruin your reputation in this city. You know how the press is these days, always looking for scandals and all that. Don't give him a reason to try to screw you over. All it takes is one 'anonymous' tip about you not doing your job or threatening a certain council member and it can escalate and escalate and make you wish you were never police chief in the first place."

"Sokka, relax. I'm not going to make an idiot of myself in those meetings. You really think I don't-?

"Toph, come on. Don't make an ass out of me. I'm just warning you to be careful. Good luck getting anything out of those witnesses tomorrow."

"Alright, I'll be careful, Meathead. I'll catch you later."

I kept thinking about what Sokka had told me well into the night.


End file.
